Black Agenda Report
Black Agenda Report
News, commentary and analysis from the black left.

  • Home
  • Africa
  • African America
  • Education
  • Environment
  • International
  • Media and Culture
  • Political Economy
  • Radio
  • US Politics
  • War and Empire

Black Agenda Radio for Week of July 24, 2017
25 Jul 2017
🖨️ Print Article

Black Elites, and Many Black Voters, Supported Mass Black Incarceration

Historian, author and activist Paul Street has high praise for James Forman Jr.’s new book, Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America. Forman is a professor at Yale Law School and a former public defender in Washington, DC. His book “fills a giant hole in the literature,” illuminating the role played by “Black elites in the rise of the mass incarceration system,” said Street, himself an expert on race and the U.S. penal system. “Many ordinary, working class Black voters in the 70s and 80s have actively supported the racially disparate war on crime and drugs that ended up producing racist mass incarceration,” said Street, whose latest book is titled They Rule: The 1% v. Democracy.

Slavery Was an Illegal Conspiracy of Criminal European Nations

A leading reparations activist says there is merit in pursuing a variety of legal strategies that might convince U.S. courts that Black people deserve damages for past treatment in the United States. However, Kamm Howard, of the legislative commission of NCOBRA, the national Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America, doesn’t believe there is anything “novel” about the proposal by Dr. Jahi Issa and Reggie Mabry, that reparations activists recognize that slavery was legal in the U.S., and adjust their legal strategy, according. “Slavery was never legal under international norms,” said Howard. “Only a small number of nations in Europe colluded together and created some rules among themselves on how to engage in these international crimes. Those were rules amongst criminals.”

Every Black Community on Earth has Sell-Outs

Speaking on the Dead Pundits Society podcast, Haitian American political analyst Pascal Robert, a contributor to Black Agenda Report, unleashed a withering broadside against the Black Misleadership Class. “There is not a place in the world that Black people have not been sold out by class traitors in the Black community,” said Robert. Black Americans have a deep interest in wealth and income redistribution. “If you are anti-union, then you are anti-Black, because more Black people are involved in unions, per capita, than there are Black people in college.”

MOVE 9 Event in Brooklyn

In 1978, nine members of the MOVE organization were sentenced to life in prison in the death of a Philadelphia policeman. Seven years later, police bombed the MOVE residence, killing 11 members, including 5 children. On Saturday, August 5, Brooklyn’s House of the Lord church hosts a day-long event, “39 Years is Too Long: Free the MOVE 9.” MOVE Minister of Communications Ramona Africa says parole board members are the biggest obstacles to freeing the surviving members. “You will find that most of them have backgrounds in law enforcement or as prosecutors,” she told Black Agenda Radio producer Kyle Fraser. “That is definitely a conflict of interest when the issue at hand” is the death of a police officer.

Apartheid and Mass Black Incarceration Go Hand In Hand

“The question should be asked,” said Pennsylvania prison inmate Charles Diggs: “Why is America imprisoning more people than any country in the world?” -- a status once held by white ruled South Africa. The apartheid system is directly connected to mass incarceration in both countries, said Diggs, in an essay for Prison Radio.

Black Agenda Radio on the Progressive Radio Network is hosted by Glen Ford and Nellie Bailey. A new edition of the program airs every Monday at 11:00am ET on PRN. Length: one hour.

More Stories


  • BAR Book Forum: Kristen R. Ghodsee’s “Second World, Second Sex”
    Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
    BAR Book Forum: Kristen R. Ghodsee’s “Second World, Second Sex”
    17 Jun 2020
    Socialist ideas about the inextricable links between class, race, and gender predate the concept of intersectionality. 
  • ​​​​​​​Re-Embracing Internationalism and Class Solidarity in the Time of #BlackLivesMatter
    Berna Ellorin and Adrian Bonifacio
    ​​​​​​​Re-Embracing Internationalism and Class Solidarity in the Time of #BlackLivesMatter
    17 Jun 2020
    The struggle against systemic racism and the police state in the US is integral and linked to the struggle against US wars of aggression overseas. 
  • Black-Outs, ‘Black Lives Matter’ and Black Power
    Erica Caines
    Black-Outs, ‘Black Lives Matter’ and Black Power
    17 Jun 2020
    Community control of police and prison abolition have been completely removed from the conversations dictated by a mainstream and complacent narrative.
  • Caribbean Workers and Capitalist Geography: An interview with Marion Werner
    The Public Archive
    Caribbean Workers and Capitalist Geography: An interview with Marion Werner
    17 Jun 2020
    Global Displacements is an examination of the impact of the global organization of capitalist accumulation and exploitation on the life and labor of Haitian and Dominica
  • Update on Charges Against the Venezuela Embassy Protectors
    Ajamu Baraka and Bahman Azad
    Update on Charges Against the Venezuela Embassy Protectors
    17 Jun 2020
    It was agreed that dropping the federal charges and seeking no jail time in return for pleading to a very low-level DC Code charge was an important victory.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us